Here we go, yet one more spot to make information available as the very complex business analytics systems of current day health insurers and and are subject to change frequently. I guess this group feels they can work with data better than HHS and CMS? In addition plans to include state Medicaid plans. Do they pay the states to provide such data? I just thought that was a good question to ask as someone has to pay for all this expensive data work along the line as even non profits need money from somewhere. Perhaps the insurers are footing the entire bill here? I don’t it’s just kind of odd to me that we have this instead of more support for the Feds in working with health insurance rates so I don’t know, a tug and pull here?

Yes indeed as more insurers are hiring more Quants to analyze their business structures and view their bottom line profits across many working groups and subsidiaries this gets to be complex. It’s all about writing code and more data presented and queried in yet another format, maybe adding on some new queries that we haven’t seen before. We certainly are not short of options out there to click and read.

As business models become more complex there’s more research time than ever for the consumer as sometimes what was there yesterday, changes today. Again with subsidiaries of insurers growing all the time, the management of all of this gets complex as well and here’s an example too where an insurer bids and wins a Medicare Advantage contract and then due to narrow networks on the other business unit, finds out there’s no doctors to see the patients on the contract that was awarded. Data contributors are listed at the HCCI page as Aetna, Humana, Kaiser Permanente and UnitedHealthcare. If you are in to “infographics” there’s a ton of them over there created with number crunching. I have grown tired of most infographics that I see out there anyway as many are marketing and done to substantiate some report someone did, and really don’t have time for them but occasionally though there is a good one that comes out. BD

The new portal will aggregate data from commercial health plans along with Medicare Advantage and Medicare health plans, if states agree, the group's announcement outlined. The site is expected to be used not only by consumers but also by employers, care providers, regulators and payers.Three major insurers are partnering with a not-for-profit group to provide consumers with greater access to healthcare cost information, the group announced Wednesday morning. Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare will work with the Health Care Cost Institute to provide consumers an online look at price and quality of various healthcare services. The new portal is expected to go live in 2015.

Dark Arts of Mathemical Deception

Professor Charlie Siefe of NYU, a mathematician debunks clinical trials, and few other items to where data is spun and fools you, every day example, hear about the perfect butt algorithm and more. These are probably some things you have never thought about but again after listening to what he has to say, it’s time to think about being skeptical. Here’s a radio show that also talks about the same topics.

This video digs in a bit further with how fictitious business models are used by banks and companies do this too. The models are so complex that CEOs don’t even understand them. “Quants, The Alchemists of Wall Street will take you through how “math models” work at banks and financial institutions in a way that even the layman can understand. More videos like over at theAlgo Duping/Killer Algorithm Page. Bank of America will also tell you“IT’ is a business” how they make money.

Weapons of Math Destruction

This is a lecture where Kathy O’Neill, a former Quant who worked for a Hedge Fund (Weapons of Math Destruction) on Wall Street will tell you what is done with your retirement money and more. The banks and companies use technology to take advantage because they can. “Of course we are going to take advantage because our tools are our brains…if they could figure out a way to take advantage of pension funds they would, a good interview with explaining smart money and dumb money.

Algorithms Shape The World

This is a very good presentation done a TED Conference and really was the one that got everyone started thinking about algorithms and today it’s talked about a lot. As he says “if you’re an algorithm, life is looking pretty good, but can’t say the same for humans”. What is a black box? Nobody has any control over the flash crash. We have moved forward a bit but still we are writing the unreadable and lost the sense of some of what is happening. Nice plug for Nanex here with research.